Appalachian Mountains, also called Appalachians, great highland system of North America, the eastern counterpart of the Rocky Mountains. Extending for almost 2,000 miles (3,200 km) from the Canadian province of Newfoundland and Labrador to central Alabama in the United States, the Appalachian Mountains form a natural barrier between the eastern Coastal Plain and the vast Interior Lowlands of North America. As a result, they have played a vital role in the settlement and development of the entire continent. They combine a heritage of natural beauty and a distinctive regional culture with contemporary problems of economic deprivation and environmental deterioration.

The highest elevations in the Appalachians are in the northern division, with Maine’s Mount Katahdin (5,268 feet [1,606 metres]), New Hampshire’s Mount Washington (6,288 feet), and other pinnacles in the White Mountains rising above 5,000 feet (1,525 metres), and in the southern region, where peaks of the North Carolina Black Mountains and the Tennessee–North Carolina Great Smoky Mountains rise above 6,000 feet (1,825 metres) and the entire system reaches its highest summit, on Mount Mitchell (6,684 feet [2,037 metres]).

Sunrise at Mount Katahdin, Maine.

Jeremy Woodhouse/Getty Images

Mount Washington as seen from the Saco River near Conway, New Hampshire.

A distinctive feature of the system is the Great Appalachian Valley. It includes the St. Lawrence River valley in Canada and the Kittatinny, Cumberland, Shenandoah, and Tennessee valleys in the United States; the latter is the site of the world-famous Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), a government agency for natural resource conservation, power production, and regional development.

The Tennessee River as seen from Lookout Mountain, Tenn.

David Muench/Corbis

In the area known geologically as “New” Appalachia, especially where there are softer limestone rocks that yield to the constant solution by water and weak acids, numerous caves are a distinctive feature of the physiography. The chief caverns lie within or border the Great Valley region of Pennsylvania, Maryland, West Virginia, Virginia, and Tennessee. Caverns of the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia provide well-known and dramatic examples of underground passages, rooms, watercourses, formations, and other cave features that honeycomb much of the land below central and southern Appalachia.

Britannica Web sites

The Appalachian Mountains of eastern North America are lower but much older than the Rocky Mountains in the West. For early settlers who wanted to move from the territory of the original 13 American colonies to the west, the Appalachians served as a natural barrier.

Sweeping from Newfoundland in Canada to Alabama in the U.S., the Appalachian Mountains dominate the landscape of the North American Eastern seaboard. Their peaks, ridges, hills, and valleys form a belt almost 2,000 miles (3,200 kilometers) long. The mountains have played an important role in the history and economic development of the United States. They formed a barrier that held the early settlers near the Atlantic coast until the colonies could develop the unity and strength to fight for independence and form a nation. When intrepid woodsmen found valleys and gaps through the ridges, a stream of pioneers moved on to settle the West.

Article Contributors

Article History

Feedback

Corrections? Updates? Help us improve this article!Contact our editors with your feedback.